A reader and writer fooling with words

Horripilation and Goosebumps

This week’s word is horripilation (pronunciation here) and it means the bristling of the hair of the head or body due to disease, terror, or chilliness. The common slang for this would be goosebumps or gooseflesh/goosepimples (US).

The word comes from Latin horripilatus – to bristle with hairs. Horrere means to tremble and pilare is to grow hair.

For some reason, my biology lessons in school included the exact mechanics of how the muscles in/under the skin move in order to raise those tiny hairs. The teacher explained that this enabled humans (and other hairy mammals) to trap a layer of insulating air amongst the hairs and keep ourselves warm. Anybody who has seen an angry cat will attest that raising our hackles can be a defense ploy as well as a heating one. Looking larger in the face of attack is generally a good thing, right?

It wasn’t until more recently that I found that humans have more hair than gorillas and hence we have massive horripilation potential. There’s some debate on whether that fact is entirely true. Gorillas have darker skin and thicker hair and hence appear hairier. Meanwhile we have very fine skin hair (vellus hair) so it’s hard to tell. It is likely that we have roughly the same amount but look less hirsute. More interesting is that researchers are beginning to understand why we still have so many hairs after all those years of evolution. It’s to beat the insects that want to bite us. Thus explaining why my hairy male friends always get bitten less than me during insect season and that shaving your legs is a bad idea.

So, the next time your heroine horripilates as the killer creeps up behind her, at least she won’t get a bed-bug bite.